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The comedy is not, however, the measly enterprise which the foregoing account of it would indicate. Ingenuous and yet very smart, The Little Accident is full of laughter that keeps its place. Among other excellent performances, most notable were those of Katherine Alexander, as the unmarried matron, and Elvia Enders, a new actress, as the college boy's fiancee.
Paris. Billed as a '"musicomedy," Paris turned out to be merely the classic myth about the youth who got tangled up with a Parisian actress and what happened when his New England mother appeared to unravel the tangle. His mother took a cocktail; this made her drunken and uproarious. A twist at the finish: the actress does not marry the New England boy.
So pleasing was Irene Bordoni as the actress that any reiterations in the dramatic continuity could easily be forgotten. Moreover Irving Aaronson's Commanders (a ten-piece orchestra) apparently shared her living quarters on the stage for they appeared at all times to do tricks and make music. They sounded five songs written by Cole Porter, an idle and talented composer who lives too silently abroad; of these the best was, "Don't Look at Me That Way." Paris provides cheer and it deserves one.
Hold Everything. Persons who engage in the prizefighting professions are often dopey and malicious, false, fraudulent and hideous, pitiful and at the same time monstrous. These are not, it would seem, ideal qualities for the musical comedy stage; yet, in addition to two prosaic versions of the ring and the bookmakers, this season has now produced a flashy operetta wherein racketeers attempt to poison the champ. The last act embroilment in Hold Everything is less exciting than the one in Ringside or Jack Dempsey's in The Big Fight; perhaps the pugilist-actors follow the advice of their title and clinch too frequently. But in place of punches there are puns which produce deep laughter; Bert Lohr has been unable to pass his cigaret test; Victor Moore quavers funny songs. Ona Munson, famed "Manhattan Mary," Be^ Compton, still a strong danseuse, and Alice Boulden, recently emerged from a cavern along Broadway, provide all the feminine requisites of a good show.
The Light of Asia. A maudlin drama elaborately upholstered is often cheered in the josh houses of Broadway. Actor-manager Walter Hampden sniffed out a play about Buddha, The Light of Asia, written ten years ago by a student of oriental religion, Georgina Jones Walton; in this biography he appeared with a leading lady called Ingeborg Torrup.
Though the best of gods are eternal, their lives should be shortened for the stage. Buddha, as offered by Actor Hampden, seemed not very divine but as old as Methuselah by the time he stopped prancing as Prince Siddartha and took to meditation. Meditation cannot help seeming absurd when it is selfconscious. And Walter Hampden was absurd sitting under Claude Bragdon's excellent conception of a Bo tree or answering the silly questions of his disciples.
Any Buddhists who were in the audience should have stormed the stage as Christians would have done in case a mime made Jesus seem a bore. Such Buddhists as were to be seen acted pleased with the play.